We recently introduced virtual challenges – a NEW virtual event option to further engage your participants. Challenges can be introduced as a standalone virtual event or as an additional category to an existing event, keeping your participants motivated year round!
What is a challenge?
A ‘challenge’ is a virtual competition that your participants can individually take part in to work towards completing an objective over a specified date range. With our challenges feature, you can set a specific distance goal that your participants will aim to cover or you can decide not to set a goal and your participants will aim to cover as much distance as they possibly can within the specified date range (e.g., whoever runs the most between July 1 – July 31st).
Why put on a challenge?
Challenges can be a great way to keep in touch with your participants. You can launch a new virtual challenge event as you prepare for your next in-person event, or it could be a fun way to engage with your participants during your event’s training period. Introducing some friendly competition is a terrific way to motivate your participants and encourage them to stay engaged with your brand.
How do participants submit their challenge results?
Participants are not required to meet the challenge goal in order to submit their results. They will be able to submit as many activities as they complete within the challenge time frame — which may be more or less than the challenge goal!
Participants can submit a challenge result from your custom branded results page or their individual results page. They will be asked to confirm their registration by signing in to their Race Roster account or by entering in their confirmation number. When submitting their result, participants will be asked to select the date of the completed activity, enter in their covered distance, and if your event requires or accepts screenshot proof, participants will be able to upload an image of their results from the tracking app they used.
Participants must submit one activity at a time, but they have the ability to post an unlimited number of activity submissions throughout the challenge. Additionally, they can submit multiple times per day — we suspect there will be some dedicated participants doing multiple activities a day to get ahead in your challenge!
[Tip: you can resend participants their confirmation number using a merge tag in an email campaign]
How can participants track their completion progress and compare against other competitors?
Participants can keep track of their challenge completion progress by visiting their individual results page or the challenge leaderboard displayed on your custom branded results page.
The challenge leaderboard will display ongoing progress such as:
- total distance the participant covered
- number of activities the participant completed
- current challenge status (e.g., in progress or complete)
- completion percentage (if a specific distance goal has been set)
You can upload a challenge map to outline a fictional ‘course route’, acting as a visual progress indicator. The challenge map displays all challenge participants by default, giving each participant a visual representation of where they stand on the start-to-finish line in relation to the other challengers. Their location on the map is based on the accumulated distances of activities they’ve submitted to the challenge. If they’d like to compare their progress to another specific challenger, they can use the search feature to filter who is displayed on the map.
The challenge map can be a great way to give participants an idea of how far they have travelled with all of their activity distance totals combined! For example, you could host a “coast to coast” virtual challenge and have the map display your participants visually progressing from the west coast to the east coast over the course of multiple months — or even years.
Is there a personalized view of challenge progress for participants?
Participants will be able to dig into their personal progress on their individual results page. They can access this page by clicking on their name from the results page. On this page, they will see their total distance achieved, distance remaining in order to meet the challenge goal (if one has been set), their current overall place, gender place, the challenge map, the challenge goal, and a tip to help participants achieve that goal. Participants can also view a breakdown of the activities they have completed, showing how much distance they have covered for each.
As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at director@raceroster.com. We’d also be happy to assist you in brainstorming some great challenge ideas for your event!
Ready to set up a challenge?
Check out the following knowledge base article for step-by-step instructions: How to create a virtual challenge.
Want to see all features of the virtual event toolkit?
Visit our virtual event toolkit resources page.
